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Kant's and Hegel's Moral Rationalism: A Feminist Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Lawrence A. Blum
Lawrence A. Blum*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Boston
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Extract

Moral philosophy has conceived of its task in many different ways throughout its history. One of these has been to articulate qualities of character, or ‘virtues,’ which the morally good or morally admirable person will possess.

This paper is a first step in an attempt to work out a feminist perspective on this aspect of moral philosophy and its history. I will focus on the moral philosophies of Kant and Hegel who exemplify different versions of a general orientation within moral philosophy which I call ‘moral rationalism.’ For the moral rationalist reason and rationality are at the center of the conception of the good or moral man (and I use the word ‘man’ here intentionally).

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 287 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1982

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References

1 Recent interpreters of Kant (drawing partly on some portions of Kant's Doctrine of Virtue) have modified the traditional ‘rationalist’ picture of Kant. In their view, while reason remains the ultimate source of moral principles, some emotional elements are found in the content or particulars of what it is to lead a moral life. On this see Greg, Mary or, Laws of Freedom (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1963),Google Scholar Ward, Keith The Development of Kant's View of Ethics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1972),Google Scholar and Rawls, John A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1971).Google Scholar Moreover, some contemporary philosophers in the Kantian tradition, such as Rawls, do try to leave room for emotional elements in their moral philosophies. Still, in all these views and interpretations emotions and in particular sympathy and compassion play a decidedly secondary role to reason. (This perspective on Kant's philosophy is elaborated in my Friendship, Altruism, and Morality [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1980]). Whether moral rationalism could be interpreted in such a way as to give these emotional qualities a central and substantial place is a question I can not consider here.

2 Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (tr. Goldthwait) (Berkeley: University of California Press 1965),Google Scholar esp. sec. 3: ‘On the Distinction of the Beautiful and the Sublime in the Interrelations of the Two Sexes.’ For my exposition of Kant's view of women I will draw primarily on this work, whith some supplementary material from his Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View.

3 For Hegel's views I draw generally on Philosophy of Right (trans. Knox) (Oxford University Press 1952) and Phenomenology of Mind (trans. Miller) (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1977).

4 Views analogous to Kant's and Hegel's were prevalent in England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and were attacked by two important feminist writers - Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and J.S. Mill, The Subjection of Women (1869). My arguments draw on theirs.

5 Kant, whose moral philosophy is firmly grounded in a view of human beings as equal in moral status and capacity, nevertheless, in the Anthropology, says that if a relationship between a man and a woman is to be ‘harmonious and indissoluble' the woman must be subject to the man (p. 167).

6 See Wollstonecraft, Vindication (Baltimore: Penguin 1972), 118.Google Scholar

7 Kant, Observations, 85ff

8 Ibid., 59

9 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, section on ‘The Family'

10 There are two not entirely separable levels of gender-role identity involved here: (1) Regarding oneself and being regarded as a man or woman (male or female). (2) Living up to the normative expectations of one's gender role. (This is like the distinction between being an X and being a good X.) The second goes beyond the first since one could be quite certain about one's identity as a woman and yet fail to live up to all of society's expectations of what constitutes behaving as a woman does. Yet even the first level is not entirely biological. On this see Oakley, Ann Sex, Gender, and Society (London: Temple Smith 1972), ch. 6.Google Scholar

11 Ibid.

12 In ‘Family Structure and Feminine Personality’ in Rosaldoand, M.Z. Lamphere, S. eds., Women, Culture, and Society (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press 1974)Google Scholar, Chodorow argues that deliberate socialization cannot by itself account for these personal and characterological differences between men and women. She sees the additional explanation not in innate biological differences but in a deeper psychoanalytically-based social/psychological account, namely one in terms of upbringing within a family, in which women normally do the childraising. I can not explain her important argument here, but it is meant to show why it is that women both have a less sharply developed sense of their own separateness from others and also why they are more emotionally attached to and emotionally responsive to others. Chodorow's argument is elaborated in The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press 1978).

13 M.Z. Rosaldo, ‘A Theoretical Overview', in Women, Culture, and Society

14 This does not mean that men are necessarily more rational than women in the sense of possessing greater understanding. For the man's non-emotional ordered thought can be quite out of touch with reality. Simone De Beauvoir describes how this quality of male ‘rationality’ can be used simply as a tool for asserting dominance over a woman (The Second Sex [New York: Vintage Books 1974]).

15 Talcott Parsons, Social Structure and Personality, cited in Rosaldo, ‘Theoretical Overview,’ Rosaldo and Lamphere, 30.

16 However, for Hegel the biological differences between men and women are not merely given but are themselves expressions of reason or mind and are material for the stages through which human spirit progresses in its development toward full self-realization: Hegel, Philosophy of Right, sec. 165.Google Scholar

17 J.S. Mill, ‘The Subjection of Women,’ in J.S. and Mill, H.T. Essays in Sex Equality (ed Rossi) Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1970, 141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 This is why one usage of ‘conjugal duty’ is in fact a particularly appropriate one: The woman is not expected to desire sex herself but she is to provide it to her husband because it is her duty to do so.

19 In Rights and Persons (Berkeley: University of California Press 1977), ch. Ill, A. I. Melden argues that family responsibilities, while involving the moral force of obligations, should not be pictured on the model of ‘institutional’ obligations defined by rules and regulations.

20 Though these ‘female’ qualities are virtues, the particular form which they take in women's lives can detract from their value, in being expressive of and even contributing to women's lack of autonomy. On this see Blum, Homiak, Housman, and Scheman, ‘Altruism and Women's Oppression; in Gould, C. and Wartof, M.. sky, eds., Women and Philosophy (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons 1976).Google Scholar This ar– ticle argues, in addition, that an altruism not grounded in autonomy is deficient as altruism. A feminist theory of virtue must be able both to express the value of women's traditional virtues and qualities, and yet to point to their more adequate expression in a context in which both men and women are equal and autonomous beings.

21 I wish to thank Marlene Gerber Fried, Carolyn Korsmeyer, and Janet Farrell Smith for invaluable assistance and discussions regarding this paper.